PZ 3 
. S5209 
H 

COPY 1 


For Old-Timers’ 
Sake . . and for 
TWO BITS 


llelluloo Pete 
o’ Reno 


By JIM SEYMOUR 

J n 

With Introduction by 
UPTON SINCLAIR 



Copyright, 1919, By 
JIM SEYMOUR 


\ 


©CI.A530116 

JUL iO iai9 



INTRODUCTORY 

My mail is full of letters from people, all sorts of 
people, all over the world, who send me manuscripts 
which they want me to read. Also they make pilgrim- 
ages and bring me manuscripts; poets and philosophers, 
prophets of new religions, discoverers of new diet-sys- 
tems, inventors of new machines, authors of novels and 
dramas and epics. They come with pockets stuffed with 
manuscripts, and with bundles under their arms. The 
other day one brought a manuscript so bulky that he 
could hardly stagger. And each one is quite sure that 
he has the secret which humanity has been seeking all 
through the ages ; each has come a long way to see me, 
and I must positively make an exception in his case. So 
you may understand that I am more afraid of a man with 
a manuscript than I am of a man with a bomb. 

Moreover, I am a respectable bourgeois citizen, and 
when a man arrives with all his belongings strapped on 
a bicycle and tells me that he is “on the bum”, I have 
the respectable householder’s sense of guilt ; I know that 
this man is “on the bum” as a result of the profit-sys- 
tem, whereby I have managed to get myself under a 
roof. As a Socialist, I kno^ that he is a man and a 
brother; but my mind is full of a beautiful book on 
human brotherhood that I am writing, and I don’t want 
to have my thoughts interrupted by unliterary reality. 

So you may see that I had a complicated set of emo- 
tions when Jim Seymour came to see me. He is a frail, 
sensitive fellow, with an uneasy look in his eyes and an 
embarrassed manner. At first I couldn’t make it out; 
but I understand now — he, too, has things going on in 
his head which put him out of touch with the world of 
reality. He would rather be away in a world of dreams, 
but he is compelled by hunger to pay visits to an author 
who doesn’t want to be bothered. 


I had to promise to read some of his poems, and also 
a short story. I read the latter — and to say that I was 
astonished would be to put it mildly. Now I sit and ask 
myself: Can it actually be that this story came out of 
the head of this “blanket stiff”, or has he “swiped” a 
story from some one of the great writers of the world, 
and had it typewritten and palmed it off on me? 

Don’t make any mistake about it, “Hellaloo Pete 
o’ Reno” is the work of a real writer, just as much so as 
if it had signed to it the name “O. Henry”, or “Rudyard 
Kipling” or “Bret Harte.” The man who wrote it has 
been down in the deeps of human suffering and tragedy. 
He has imagination, he has passion; he has local color, 
he has humor — what more would you ask of a story- 
writer? One thing more — he has style. He handles 
words and sentences as a man who knows their precise 
effects. This may come by instinct, I suppose, but I 
have never known it to come except by long practice; 
and where did this man get practice, wandering over the 
country with all his belongings strapped onto a bicycle? 
He is “on the bum”, he tells me, because his health will 
not permit him to hold a job very long. As a boy they 
worked him in a glass-factory, and took all the sap out 
of him — so he phrases it. 

Jim Seymour asked me to put up enough money 
to have some of his poems printed in a little book which 
he could sell on the road. I told him I did not have the 
money to spare. But now that I have read “Hellaloo 
Pete o’ Reno”, I am going to have it printed, even though 
I borrow the money. It may be that Jim Seymour will 
never write another story like this. He may be what 
Horace calls “a man of one book”. All I can say is that 
if he writes a dozen stories like this, he will find a pub- 
lisher for them, and he will make a reputation. 

UPTON SINCLAIR. 


HELLALOO PETE O’ RENO 

By Jim Seymour 

Mister, don’t you say anything against art to me. 
Artists might be lazy, but they ain’t the rest of it — they 
ain’t good-for-nothing. Maybe the feller that painted that 
picture ain’t exactly a Reuben, and maybe he’d ought to 
been paintin’ boxcars, but if Hellaloo Pete o’ Reno, which 
was also an artist, had been one o’ them useful eight- 
hour-a-day artists I’d of been a corpse, and you wouldn’t 
be slated to hear all about the masterpiece o’ Never 
Again. 

Of course, Pete wasn’t dependin’ in nowise on art for 
a reputation ; he had another peg to hang his cap o’ fame 
on. You see, Pete was a Simon-pure one o’ the boys, and 
the most prominent all-around good feller in the whole 
West. Whenever a bo hit camp he’d steer straight for 
Hellaloo. And it wasn’t no bum steer either, for Pete 
was always good for four bits up, and the fact was ad- 
vertised from Yuma to Butte and from Leadville to the 
Feather River. They never needed no introduction ; they 
spotted him first peep. But that wasn’t so mystifyin’, 
considerin’ his personal looks, for he had whiskers like 
some o’ them wild men yuh see in the circus, and if he’d 
ever washed his face he could of passed for a doctor. But 
it was kind o’ curious the way fellers that had never 
even heard of him would always pick him for the first 
and one best bet. I reckon these old-timers that seesaw 
with fortune sort o’ know each other by instinc’. 

Funny thing about Hellaloo Pete was he had a pas- 
sion for letter-writin’, or, as my old schoolteacher would 
of put it, for conveyin’ intelligence. He couldn’t write 
his own name, but he was some handy with a pencil at 
that, and he used to write his letters in pictures instead 
of the regulation way. He could draw anything from a 


4 Hellaloo Pete o’ Reno 

railroad train to a bunch o’ flies. Mazeer Felix said that 
Pete had motion. I never seen much of it, ’specially 
when he had a boss lookin’ down his collar, but I reckon 
a professional artist knows his business. Anyway, when 
Pete drawed a picture of a dancin’ girl she was sure 
kickin’ her heels, and I believe if he’d tried right hard he 
could of made a Digger Indian look like he was movin’. 

This here Mazeer Felix Somebody-or-Other was one 
o’ them French highbrow artists that could slap a hand- 
ful o’ paint on a piece o’ tarp and pull down a check 
that would make your head swim. I don’t reckon he had 
to work more than fifteen minutes a year to get a good 
livin’, and I never could understand why he didn’t take 
a rest, but here he was towerin’ the country lookin’ for 
local color. If he’d said colors, an old prospector like me 
would of savvied him natural, but I never could figger 
out how a man expected to find any color worth speakin’ 
of in a bunch o’ sand and sagebrush. Maybe he meant 
loco color. 

Anyhow, me and Hellaloo was out on one of our trips 
when we run across Mazeer Felix with his paintbox. 
Pete, bein’ one of the fraternity, as Felix put it, cottoned 
to him like a foxtail to a woolen blanket. The result was, 
I had to cook the dinner while Pete and Felix drawed 
sketches of everything in sight and a lot that wasn’t. And 
1 want to tell you them two was one red hot pair o’ 
drawers. 

Now poor old Hellaloo had never had anything better 
than one o’ them penny lead-pencils they sell hereabouts 
for a nickel, and I swear I could write better with a rusty 
nail. Mazeer Feliz thought so too, and that’s how he 
come to give Pete a fine soft pencil that wrote as purty 
and black as a grubthief’ s heart. And that’s how Pete 
come to start drawin’ worse than ever. He got better 


Hellaloo Pete o’ Reno 5 

and better all the time, too, and he was as tickled as if 
he’d had a feather duster under his nose. Mazeer Felix 
was tickled too ; he’d found colors. 

Well, the drawin’ stopped when all the paper was 
used up. It would of stopped anyhow, because dinner 
was ready, and when I’m the cook I don’t stand for no 
foolin’ from common boarders. And I got to pay my 
compliments to Mazeer Felix as an all-around man at his 
trade, for he was a great artist at stowin’ away grub, 
too. Of course, it wasn’t so surprisin’ that he should eat 
a square meal, for if I do say so myself, I’m about the 
best cook west of the North Pole. But Mazeer Felix et 
about two square meals, and they set well. He beamed 
all over like a new tin can on a sunshiny dump, and got 
as friendly as a lost puppy that’s found his way home 
again. And he invited us to write to him, care of the 
Royal George Cafe, so forth and so on — me in English 
and Hellaloo in art. Then he give each of us one o’ 
them dinky cigarets with a one-half of one percent kick, 
and we parted, hopin’ we’d meet again. That is, I was 
doin’ one-half of one percent of our share of the hopin’ 
and Pete the balance. 

Mister, this is a twisted-up world. I met Felix again 
and poor old Pete never did. 

Well s’r, me and Pete took plenty o’ time, same as 
usual, campin’ at one place for five days, waitin’ for a 
train to stop and take water so’s we could mail a letter 
to Mazeer Felix. And finally we got into Ulcer Gulch 
and found the whole town roarin’ with hylarity. Watts 
Butterworth, postmaster and general merchandise, had 
fished a letter from the mailbag addressed to Mr. Peter 
Eno, and was showin’ it to the boys. 

“He’s some Peterino at that,” grinned Watts. “Don’t 


6 Hf.llaloo Pete o’ Reno 

it beat all, though, how people can’t get Pete’s name 

right?” 

“ ’Tain’t so funny at that,” says Yow-yow Johnson, 
“ ’cause Pete can’t write it hisself.” 

Now the truth is, Pete’s real name was Smith or Wil- 
liamson, or something like that. Seein’ I only knowed 
him seven or eight years I don’t remember just what. 
Him and me n elver served on no juries together, so I 
always used his stage name, which was Hellaloo Pete 
o’ Reno. And when Pete asked the crowd how they 
would write his name he had ’em all stumped, and him 
and me had a good laugh at ’em for not knowin’ an old 
acquaintance’s name in real life. 

The letter, of course, was from Mazeer Felix, statin’ 
he’d be in Never Again at such and such a time, and if 
his good friend Hellaloo would be so kind as to get ready 
to go to France to study art with all expenses paid, it 
would be considered a great favor by yours truly, 
Mazeer Felix. Also, Mazeer Felix, bein’ a good human 
sort of a cuss and knowin’ Pete wouldn’t like to leave 
me in the lurch, had proposed that I go along to fix up 
the bacon and beans. Mazeer Felix sure knowed an art- 
ist when he seen one. 

Pete and me had quite an argument over that propo- 
sition. Pete was right in for it. He was goin’, he said, 
and I was goin’ with him if he had to truss me up and 
drag me. Pete was always a good man and I got to 
give him credit for it, but he never could of licked me 
if my foot hadn’t slipped on a rock. Besides, while we 
was wrastlin’ Pete kept tellin’ me about the slathers o’ 
purty women over there, and I never could scrap and 
deebate at the same time. Howsumever, I agreed to go. 

Now while Felix had told us when he would get to 
Never Again, he plumb forgot to mention how long he 


7 


Hellaloo Pete o’ Reno 

would stay, and seem’ the letter had been forrarded to us 
to Ulcer Gulch and we’d have to go along with it back 
to Never Again, he hadn’t maybe left us any too much 
time. From Ulcer Gulch to Never Again is about three 
hunderd miles as the crow flies. But the wagon road 
don’t go that way; it goes more as the snake wiggles. 
You see, the sandhills keep jumpin’ around, and it’s 
easier to change the course of the road by runnin’ a 
wagon over a new place than it is to shovel the sandhills 
back where they was last week. Did you ever see a 
corkscrew that’s been used till it’s got bent crooked? I 
don’t want to stretch things any, Mister, because I was 
brought up right, but the fact is, that road is crookeder 
and twisteder than a railroad line on a map put out by 
some other company. 

But Pete and me figgered it out we could make it 
over Junkie Trail, which is a short rowte if you’re lucky 
and the longest kind of a long one if you ain’t. Some 
says it gets its name because no junkman ever went 
over it, but me and Hellaloo always calcalated it was 
called Junkie Trail because it would be such good pickin’ 
for one. There was everything under the sun there — 
except water. There was copper and brass, and rags 
and rubber and rope; and there was bones — plenty of 
’em. And they wasn’t cow bones, either. 

Of course, them things didn’t scare me and Pete none, 
because Pete wasn’t afraid of anything that was ever 
made and I wasn’t afraid o’ Pete. Besides, we knowed 
the country from rattlesnake to landshark, and we al- 
ways had got through it so far and reckoned we always 
would. Anyway, there’s one consoling thing about the 
desert : the real big mistake can’t never be made but once, 

I wonder if they got any deserts in France. If they 
ain’t I wouldn’t of been contented. A feller learns to 


8 Hellaloo Pete o’ Reno 

love the desert. IPs hard, but it’s true blue. It’s just 
like a friend of the Hellaloo Pete stripe, which would cuss 
you like he was goin’ to bite your head off, but would 
chuck his life into the showdown for you any time. 
People that was refined and sissyfied always thought 
Pete was rough and cruel, but them that was tough 
enough to stand him knowed he was the same old Pete 
whenever yuh seen him. 

I liked Pete, and I like the desert because it’s so much 
like Pete. Neither one had any use for a bonehead; 
neither one would stand for a fool walkin’ over ’em. 

Thanks, I don’t care if I do. Now, I just want to in- 
sist a couple o’ times or so that the desert is true blue. 
It ain’t got no slushy sympathy, and it don’t know the 
meanin’ o’ pity, but it ain’t treacherous like some o’ them 
high schoolteachers says. It’s always the same, and it’s 
your own fault if it ketches yuh nappin’, because it’s 
warned you time and time again. It won’t stand for 
carelessness, but nobody but a fool tenderfoot has any 
light to be careless with a desert, and his license is only 
good for once. 

Things that is always the same ain’t treacherous, and 
the desert is the same, year after year, and it’s gettin’ 
more so all the time. There’ll be a time when you and 
me is gone; there’ll be a time when all them that’s 
cornin’ after us is gone; and there’ll be a time when all 
that us and them has built will be gone. Dust — all dust. 
Sands of the desert — the desert that will still be on the 
job, bigger, harder, truer than ever. 

That’s what causes the desert creep, Mister. That’s 
what makes you shiver on hot sand at high noon. Some 
of us don’t stop to reason it out, but our hides crimp be- 
cause we’re facin’ our finish. We can strut around and 
brag when we’re ganged up in a house, lookin’ at each 


Hellaloo Pete o’ Reno 


9 


other and at walls that we built ourselves, and listenin’ 
to voices that ain’t nothing but noise, but when we scat- 
ter and look at the desert, so powerful that it can afford 
to keep still about it, our rattlin’ tongues freeze up and 
we don’t feel so damned important. 

Well, me and Pete fixed up our packs in an amazing 
hurry for such steady old-timers, and us and our one 
lone burro tied into Junkie Trail. We’d ought to of 
took more burros, but there wasn’t none to be had right 
then. And we’d ought to of done some other little things 
that would of took some time, but the thought of goin’ 
across the ocean had us excited as two kids goin’ to the 
circus, and with just about as much sense. But things 
went along all right until we was cornin’ up to Old Tight- 
mouth Boulder, fixin’ to camp for the night. 

Old Tightmouth sets overlookin’ a place that used to 
be a river some dozens or millions o’ years ago, and 
while it’s purty much flattened out these days, there’s 
some places where the rocks has kept the banks in right 
fair shape, and the trail runs along the edge of a darn 
mean drop. And just as we was passin’ one of these tick- 
lish places, old Scavenger, the burro, which was gettin’ 
too ancient for such a trip anyhow, made a bum step and 
landed in the river bed. 

Mister, the feller that said it never rains if it don’t 
pour was a wise galoot. Scavenger wasn’t satisfied with 
knockin’ the last bit o’ ginger out of his poor old car- 
cass, but he knocked a couple o’ staves out of our worn- 
out watercask, and before we could scramble down to res- 
cue it there wasn’t more than seven or nine drops o’ 
water left in it. 

Howsumever, even with a dead jack and a busted kag, 
things might of been worse. The big waterbag was in 
good shape, with close onto ten quarts in it, and seein’ 


10 


Hellaloo Pete o’ Reno 


there wasn’t no donkey to help drink it, we figgered it 
would be plenty. So we fixed our supper and went to 
bed, and everything would of been all right if I hadn’t 
got took down with the spasmodic malaria which I used 
to have regular in the East and which I come west to 
get rid of. I hadn’t had a touch of it in thirteen years 
and thought I’d shook it off for good, but you remember 
what the feller says about the pourin’ rain. 

Well, I leaned the waterbag against Tightmouth’s 
paw where I could reach out and get a drink durin’ the 
night, and I reckon I drunk a good bit of it. But that’s 
one of the things the professors calls the unknowable, 
for when we got up in the morning we found the water- 
bag layin’ flat on its side, stark empty. I had forgot the 
rules of the desert, forgot to put the cork back in the 
bag, and the bag had fell over in the night, which is a 
nasty habit o’ theirs, and left us in one hell of a fix, with 
my fever gettin’ worse instead o’ better. 

Mister, did you ever have your friendship put to the 
test? It’s all right to lend a friend a few dollars when 
you’re purty sure he’ll pay it back and you can afford to 
lose it if he don’t. And it’s all right to give him a bit o’ 
service. When you’re needin’ the exercise for your own 
health. But when it comes to subtractin’ accordin’ to 
the higher mathematics o’ life and death, how do yuh 
stack up? Do you reckon your fancy bathtub keeps you 
as clean as Hellaloo Pete o’ Reno? 

You needn’t answer, Mister. Them’s things to talk 
to ourselves about. Peter and me never knowed at that 
time just how far we had to go, and Pete ain’t found out 
since. But Seltzer McGraw, the poet, which maybe you’ll 
meet some day, got it afterwards from one o’ them gov- 
ernment civil engineers that happened to be civil, and he 
puts it this way: 


11 


Hellaloo Pete o’ Reno 
A couple o’ skulls in the dry crick bed, 

A pal with the shakes and a stone dead jack, 

A hunderd and seven miles ahead 
And a damn sight further back. 

Excuse me, but I ain’t feelin’ any too well. There’s 
something wrong with my pipe, and when that happens 
there’s something wrong with me. Poetry and art is 
twin sisters, and either one can hand you a powerful jolt. 
Seltzer hits me hard because he’s one o’ them old-fash- 
ioned poets that I can understand. Them new poets might 
be all right, but they ain’t got the old fire. 

Barrin’ one thing, Pete and me both was just as good 
as dead. But a pair o’ desert rats that’s bucked the game 
as long as we had wasn’t goin’ to overlook no cards. I 
was purty well gone, but Pete was spry as ever, so he 
took his knife and opened Scavenger’s belly. There was 
water there — maybe enough, maybe not. Pete was put- 
tin’ some of it into the big waterbag and some into the 
two-quart bag that we carried for immediate use, when 
an argument started about how much he was to take 
and how much to leave for me. He said that a man that 
had fever and was too sick to move needed plenty o’ 
water, and I said that a man that had to walk like blazes 
in the hot sun to get help for a good-for-nothing lizard 
that petered out in a tight place needed the most water 
because he was still of some use in the world. Pete 
said he wasn’t goin’ to pick on an invalid and I could talk 
all I pleased, but he promised me faithful he’d punch 
my head and send me to the hospital soon as I got well 
enough to stand it. I don’t know how long the argument 
lasted, but we finally agreed to split fifty-fifty, Pete givin’ 
in suspiciously cheerful like. He put the big waterbag 
alongside of me, told me what corks was for, and took 
the little bag and struck out. 


12 


Hellaloo Pete o’ Reno 


I laid there two or three days, sippin’ the water as 
gentle as possible, but it got lower and lower, till there 
wasn’t a drop left. After that things got poco serious 
and I begun to scheme like a feller will. I figgered I ? d 
hold my tongue on the damp ground where the bag had 
been layin’ and get a little moisture that way. So I 
picked up the bag and there under it was one o’ Hella- 
loo’s drawin’s, tellin’ me plain as day there was more 
water where the last come from. I’d watched Pete like 
a hawk to see that he didn’t play no tricks on me, because 
it was him all over to be doin’ a feller a good turn by 
mistake like, and he didn’t get no chance to leave some 
water in the coffee pot, or anything like that. But he’d 
beat me out anyhow, and efven if the water wasn’t as 
good as it might of been some other way, there’s times 
when we’re thankful for ‘small favors, ’specially when 
we feel that the small ones is generally the big ones. 

The boys from Never Again found me just in time. 
I was layin’ unconscious in the sun, with my face on 
Scavenger’s belly. They lugged me in and seen to it 
that I had good care, but it was a solid week before I 
quit babblin’ long enough to hear what had become o’ 
Pete. It seems he’d been staggerin’ along like a drunk 
and knowed he wasn’t quite goin’ to make it. His tongue 
was swelled up like an overripe cucumber and as sticky 
as tarweed, so’s he couldn’t of talked if he’d tried, so he’d 
drawed a picture of me and Scavenger layin’ together 
alongside of Old Tightmouth. And a three-year-old idiot 
could of told with one peep that I was ready to cash in. 
Pete had put a face on me that I’m ashamed to admit was 
ever mine. I remember Mazeer Feliz said Pete was 
good at execution, and I reckon he was. And he’d 
drawed Old Tightmouth so as to give my exact street 


Hellaloo Pete o’ Reno 13 

and number. Tightmouth was built just like that Eegyp- 
tian jinx, but Pete had made him talk. 

When Pete reached the top of the hill overlookin’ the 
town he had just enough strength left to wave the paper 
a couple o’ times and keel over. But the boys happened 
to spot him, and they rushed up in a gang, took one look 
at Pete and one at the picture, and a bunch of ’em grabbed 
their pintos and headed out right then and pronto. Which 
quick understandin’ and quick action is what brought me 
here to tell you about it. 

The boys was sure all cut up over things. They seen 
Pete had something on his mind, but they couldn’t get a 
word out of him and didn’t think they ever would, and I 
kept yellin’ about Pete and Mazeer Felix. They figgered 
Felix might help, but he had moseyed off somewhere a 
while back and nobody knowed where he’d went. But 
finally they wrote him a letter informin’ him that if he 
wanted to see his friend Hellaloo Pete o’ Reno this side 
o’ paraside he’d better hustle. They addressed the letter 
to Mazeer Felix So-and-So, Care of Somebody that Sav- 
vies Art, U. S. A., and the whole crowd went down to 
the station and flagged the Fogbelt Limited in violence 
of the rules of the railroad, and mailed the letter. 

This here fame is something that I never hankered 
after, but it’s sure got its uses. That letter went straight 
to Mazeer Felix and inside o’ three days he was in town 
again. But he didn’t get in in time to bid Pete goodby, 
for Pete had started on a trip across the big silent desert. 
Without his old pal, Mister — without his old pal. Alone 
on a trip across the big silent desert o’ death. Pete — 
—Hellaloo Pete — Hellaloo Pete o’ — o’ — 

They buried him right in the sooburbs of the town, 
and Skinny Simpkins, which used to be a lawyer back in 
Michigan, made a speech. Pm sorry T didn’t hear it, 


14 Hellaloo Pete o’ Reno 

because Skinny’s a mighty fine talker even if he ain’t 
good for anything else. But I was still out o’ my head 
and couldn’t take no part in the festivities. Howsum- 
ever, they managed to get along without me, and after 
the speech they pried one end out o’ Dishrag Charlie’s 
cowshed and set it up for a tombstone. Then they re- 
quested Mazeer Felix would he paint Pete’s name on it, 
and Mazeer Feliz said he’d not only paint his name, but 
his fame, and his bigness, and his nobleness, and all the 
beautiful things that Skinny had said about him. 

It took Felix some time to get them old boards in 
shape for the real job, but he kept at it. Nobody ever 
seen such workin’ this side of the Rockies. Artists 
lazy? Maybe they’re lazy in your line o’ business, or 
mine, but you and me would be salamanders alongside 
of ’em at paintin’ pictures. 

By the time Felix got his deck cleared for action I 
was able to sit out on the front porch of the Hotel Tid- 
bit and watch the performance. I wasn’t close enough to 
see just what Felix was doin’, and Doc Slicer wouldn’t 
let me out into the sun, but I could see most of the gen- 
eralities. When Mazeer Felix started on the high art 
work the whole town stood around and watched him, 
but he never knowed they was livin’. After he got 
warmed up he worked like a kyote diggin’ for a ground 
squirrel. Say, if I had a whole gang o’ painters like 
Felix I’d take a contract paintin’ oiltanks. In six months 
I’d be grubstaked for life. 

Mister, when Felix stopped work *and stepped back 
to look at the job, there was a silence like the desert it- 
self. Art is a wonderful thing. Mazeer Felix was a 
Frenchman and I suppose he painted that picture in his 
own language, but every last one o’ them boys under- 
stood it — Mexicans, Swedes, Native Sons and all, — even 


15 


Hellaloo" Pete o’ Reno 

Yung Kau, a well fed female fresh from Shanghai by 
way o’ Mexicali, which was cashierin’ for Sling Chuck 
Hi in the Never Again Chop Suey Auditorium. 

The whole gang o’ them fellers was snifflin’, and doin’ 
it like they meant it. Some of ’em was tougher than a 
fifteen-cent steak, but they felt just as bad as us good 
respectable fellers. Mazee Felix hisself choked a couple 
o’ times and then blubbered. He was a big man with a 
big heart ; that’s why he was a baby. And he wasn’t the 
only one that needed a suck-bottle, either. 

After a while Mazeer Felix picked up a brush and 
painted the epithet — all right, epitaph — which was wrote 
by Seltzer McGraw, editor of the Never Again NeSvs, 
and then down in one corner he slapped his ten-thousand- 
dollar John Hancock. 

No, I can’t tell yuh what was on the picture. When I 
got so’s I could walk I went over to take a good look at 
it, but I just looked for one second and that was long 
enough for it to tear me to pieces. I got right out o’ 
Never Again and ain’t been back since. But if you want 
to know the difference between an artist and a common 
moneygrubber, go over to Never Again and take a look 
at: Hellaloo Pete’s tombstone. It’s a long trip, but you’ll 
take a longer one in some other direction before yuh see 
a man’s very soul smeared on a piece o’ cowshed. 

No, yuh don’t need to take a chance on Junkie Trail, 
and I reckon you’re too old to go by the Never Again 
Road. Now Mister, that’s all right. I ain’t sayin’ you 
ain’t husky enough to make it, but there’s such a thing as 
death from old age, and I’d like to hear that you reached 
Never Again in time to see the great masterpiece before 
your funeral. So you just take this little fifty-mile jaunt 
to Snakehead and ride the Snaketail Valley Railroad 
do*wn to the Pacific Trunk Line. And they’ll sell you a 


16 Hellaloo Pete’ o’ Reno 

ticket straight through to your destination, meanin’ due 
east to Rattlehead Junction and west southwest by west 
to Never Again. And they won’t charge you any more 
than they would if you was goin’ clear around the con- 
tinent. 

You’ll know where to unload on the other division, 
because everbody’ll get excited when the brakeman 
comes through yellin’ the name of the station. And 
when you get off the train, just confiscate the first 
man yuh see, and tell him Windy Flapp orders him to 
show you the town and do it right, penalty for neglect o’ 
duty bein’ what happens to him when I overtake him. 
Tell him I want you to see the finest picture that’s ever 
happened in these parts, barrin’ only Hellaloo Pete’s pic- 
ture of the dead jackass and me. And) when yuh get 
through lookin’ and get your eyes dried, go down to the 
Ear Plus Saloon and see Hellaloo Pete o’ — Hellaloo Pete’s 
last drawin’, which you’ll see fixed up in a frame o’ pure 
gold, made with the findin’s o’ Pete’s prospectin’ friends. 

Yes, he bought it, but he don’t own it. It was give 
to me, but seein’ how Pete’s old mother back East 
wouldn’t never hear from him no more, I ordered it sold 
at auction, she to get the proceeds and the man that 
didn’t bid heavy to get hurt. Old John bid it in, but it 
ain’t his because it was decided that all bids would be 
collected and everybody that ever knowed Pete would 
own it in communion. But seein’ as John paid the most, 
we appointed him janitor of it. We sent the old woman 
something like seven thousand dollars in cash, includin’ a 
present of a fancy pink and purple silk nightgown from 
Tung Kau, and an educated Gila monster from Yow- 
yow. 

The epi-taph? Mister, that epitaph is what made the 
Never Again News famous. More than seventy- five peo- 


Hellaloo Pete o’ Reno 


17 


pie sent in for sample copies in one month. And them 
big Eastern newspapers copied it wholesale. Seltzer 
said they was well educated if they was only Easterners, 
and could appreciate literary merit, ’specially the Boston 
Sanskrit and the Philadelphia Public Alleger. 

Mister, it’s awful close in here; can’t you open an- 
other window? Mazeer Feliz thought well of it too, and 
had Seltzer print a bunch of ’em to pass around. Took 
some back to France with him, too. 

Excuse me, but IVe got to cough and — it hurts me 
to do it. Soon’s I get my breath I’ll — recite you that 
epitaph. It goes : 

Off with your hats, you desert rats, 

What in the hell do you mean-o? 

For here lies art and the great big heart 
Of Hellaloo Pete o’ — 

O’ where, Mister, o’ where? Hellaloo Pete o’ where? 
Mister, I’m an old man — and my lungs is desert dust. 
Soon I’ll be — where Hellaloo — Pete is. Do me a — favor, 
Mister. Send me to— rest on the desert— with Pete. Do 
that — Mister. 

Where are you — Mister? Shake — hands. Goodby — 
Mister. Do that. Just — write on the — box: Windy — 
Flapp,— Never— Again. 



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